Here are the moments from Wednesday’s hearing that made it worth watching:

Did the IRS just blame the victim?

Former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman dropped this bit of advice during his testimony: targeted conservative groups could have just not applied for tax-exempt status at all.

All they had to do, Shulman told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was act like they were already a 501(c)(4) and then file their tax return that way.

“There’s no need to go through the application process,” Shulman said in an exchange with Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.). “You can start up operations as a 501(c)(4) and file your return at the end of the year.”

In fact, Shulman said, there was no evidence that any organizations had to shut down their operations because of the lengthy investigations.

The inspector general’s office, however, has reported that 28 of the groups gave up and withdrew their applications because the process was taking so long.

And the news that they didn’t really have to apply isn’t likely to give much relief to the groups that got the extra scrutiny.

“I would remind him that it is well within our rights to take advantage of any and all tax statuses, and to choose to be ‘official’ is not wrong,” Toby Marie Walker of the Waco Tea Party said in an email. “Is he trying to shift the blame to the victims of the IRS targeting? If we did not ‘need’ to apply, then why did IRS not just send us a letter stating that?”

I did nothing wrong, and I won’t take questions

For pure drama, nothing topped the spectacle of Lois Lerner, the director of the IRS office at the center of the scandal, standing up for herself — and then taking the Fifth Amendment.

“I have not done anything wrong,” Lerner said, slowly and deliberately — and she pleaded with the committee, and the public, not to draw conclusions.

“One of the purposes of the Fifth Amendment is to protect innocent individuals, and that is the right I’m invoking today,” Lerner said.

And with that, she clammed up: “I will not answer any questions or testify today.”

Then Committee Chairman Darrell Issa excused her — and she left the room.

Shulman smirks

He may have taken whack after whack from the committee — and he repeatedly said he regretted that the scandal happened on his watch — but Shulman was one witness who wasn’t afraid of showing Congress a little attitude.

He was a serial smirker, grinning or furrowing his brow when he thought the questions were going overboard. To Michael Turner (R-Ohio), who asked if he agreed that it “doesn’t represent American values” to target Americans for their political beliefs, Shulman suppressed a laugh: “I do not see those words in the report, Mr. Turner.”

When asked why he might visit the White House, his first response: “The Easter egg roll, with my kids.”

When John Mica (R-Fla.) asked Shulman whether he had ever given political donations, he looked puzzled, as if it was the dumbest question in the world. (He was appointed by President George W. Bush, but The Washington Post has reported that he gave $500 to the Democratic National Committee in 2004.)

“Have I in the past? To the best of my recollection, I have,” Shulman said — but not in a long time, and not while he was IRS commissioner.

And when Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) asked if “the American people are supposed to believe that” when Shulman said he never discussed the situation with the White House, Shulman just gave him an icy stare.

If Shulman couldn’t keep his attitude in check, though, some committee members couldn’t restrain themselves from some over-the-top comparisons — like the time Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) compared the IRS Cincinnati employees to a dangerous, armed intruder.

“If there’s someone wielding a knife in the parking lot, are you going to wait for the inspector general?” Gowdy asked.

IRS emails reveal debate — about the wrong issue

The committee also provided the first look at some of the internal IRS email exchanges when Lerner started looking into the screening practices in June 2011.

The email exchange — later posted to the committee’s website — shows that officials in the IRS tax-exempt office were concerned about whether too many groups could be labeled as tea party organizations. But the emails don’t show any worries about whether it was fair to give the tea party groups extra screening in the first place.

“What criteria are being used to label a case a ‘Tea Party case’? We want to think about whether those criteria are resulting in over-inclusion,” Holly Paz, a top official in the exempt organizations office, wrote in a June email to Cindy Thomas of the IRS Cincinnati office.

Later, when Thomas sent the list of search terms to Paz — including “tea party” and “patriot,” as well as “statements in the case file that are critical of how the country is being run” — she wrote that the specialists “need to be given the criteria to use” so they know whether to give special screening to all of those cases.

“I guess what I am trying to say is that it doesn’t matter what the cases are called or how they are grouped, EOD [the exempt organizations division] needs guidance to ensure consistency,” Thomas wrote in an email.

IG gets a scolding

The committee posted the email exchange to back up one of Issa’s biggest gripes: The Treasury inspector general’s office knew as early as May 2012 that the IRS was questioning its own practices — but didn’t tell Congress.

It was a big departure from the earlier congressional hearings, in which lawmakers from both parties have treated J. Russell George like a conquering hero.

“What was the ‘aha’ moment, and didn’t you have an obligation to report it at that time?” Issa asked George.

George, however, said it would have been “counterproductive” to give Congress an early heads up before his office was sure all of its information was accurate. He also took a shot at Congress, hinting that if he had given lawmakers a preview, it would have leaked.

When information is given to the Hill, George said, it is “not retained on the Hill.”

Shulman explains why he didn’t go back to Congress

Over and over Wednesday, committee members asked Shulman why he didn’t correct his March 2012 testimony that there was “no targeting.” His story was always the same: He learned there was a list of search terms but didn’t know everything about how it was being used, so he left the job to the inspector general.

“I didn’t know who was on the list, how it was being used, whether there were liberal groups as well as conservative groups,” Shulman said in an exchange with Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the committee. “At that point, I didn’t have a full set of facts to come back to Congress with.”

“I didn’t know the scope and severity of it,” Shulman said, and he “felt comfort” that the inspector general would find out the rest. He thought it was the right decision not to tell Congress until the inspector general had finished its work, he said, and “I still feel that way.”

“Well, I’m sorry, that’s not good enough,” said Cummings.

Later, Shulman said his then-deputy — Steven Miller, who later became acting IRS commissioner until he was forced to resign — told him the practice had already been stopped.

“The responsible deputy told me it was being stopped. I had no reason to believe otherwise,” Shulman said.

Issa stands up for Lerner — and then backs down

Issa has taken his share of attacks for being too aggressive, but on Wednesday he was the one who stood up for Lerner’s constitutional rights — and against other committee Republicans who said she waived her Fifth Amendment rights when she gave her opening statement.

Lerner, Issa said, “was entitled” to invoke the Fifth Amendment. “Although there might be some questions about how it was done, we have to respect it,” he said.

That respect didn’t last long, though. A few hours later, Issa changed his mind and suggested he might call Lerner back — noting that “I must consider” the GOP objections that she couldn’t invoke the Fifth Amendments after giving a substantive opening statement.

To make the point, Issa declared that the hearing is in recess, not adjourned.